Optimum interaction in the distribution grid

Project state

Started

The distribution grid is facing major challenges on route to achieving a sustainable energy supply.
Bild: sergbob - Fotolia

With the increasing expansion of renewable energies, the medium- and low-voltage distribution grids are reaching their intake limits, particularly in rural areas. This is leading to problems with maintaining the voltage stability and with equipment overloads.

In the Verteilnetz 2020 project, a wide-ranging consortium from industry and science, which is coordinated by the Technische Universität München (TUM) and the Technische Hochschule (TH) Nürnberg, is carrying our research to improve the capacity and secure the grid quality of the distribution grids. For this purpose, the project partners are intending to develop a diverse range of previously unavailable operating resources and to integrate them into the distribution grids.

These innovative operating resources include controllable and adjustable feeders and inverters which, thanks to their enhanced functionality, can maintain the voltage or regulate active and reactive power. The researchers are also intending to develop controllable, decentralised electricity storage systems that can be operated in an optimal cycle based on consumption and production forecasts. They therefore want to achieve a long service life and thus ensure the economic operation of the storage systems. Other innovative operating resources shall include intelligent, controllable and multifunctional linear regulators that in local grid stations and as train controllers can, among other things, balance out grid disturbances and maintain the voltage.

By means of a communication system, the project partners want to integrate the various operating resources into an overarching, automated regulatory system. Control technology shall ensure the optimal interaction between the operating resources.

To this end, the scientists are first of all simulating how the various operating resources work together and will then investigate this simulation in a laboratory test. Based on this, they then want to test out the entire system as part of a field trail in the distribution grid of the participating grid operator, Infra Fürth GmbH.